rutilated quartz
by glass-jars
Summary: Season 9, episode 1 spoilers. Ezekiel and Sam Winchester in Sam's subconscious.


"Who are you?"

Ezekiel looked up from his contemplation of the forest. He heard birds, and squirrels, and vitality and hope—in the sound of a gentle breeze and the dampness of the kind of rain that is more mist than anything else. He set his eyes upon Sam Winchester, and he said,

"I am an angel of the Lord."

Sam frowned, and hunched his shoulders, shoving his hands into his pockets. His thin body, to Ezekiel, seemed as though it were a wizened tree in need of water and sunlight and love. Tired, broken, weakened but... Salvageable. Ezekiel held one hand out, with his palm facing up to the clouded blue sky. The other hung by his side.

With a suspicious squint to his eyes, and a soft hesitation to his movements, Sam slipped his own roughly scarred left hand across Ezekiel's and closed his fingers around the angel's. They were cold to Ezekiel's touch and thin. Like twigs wrapped in old vellum.

"That wasn't Dean, back there. That was you."

Ezekiel raised his other hand and placed it along Sam's sharp knuckles, and nodded at him. He spoke, and said, "It was I. I needed your consent, to occupy your body for any length of time. To heal you, and myself." He removed his hold from Sam, and turned away. There stood a clearing, not far off, between the many dark trees. Above, the clouds shifted and morphed, and cream-colored crepuscular rays broke from them to spotlight patches of the forest floor. It was to this mottled golden-green area Ezekiel made his way. Turned his face up to the sunlight and shadows.

"I apologize, for deceiving you."

A laugh burst from Sam then—short and unamused and hoarse. Ezekiel glanced over his shoulder to see Sam shaking his head. The boy's eyes were much like the sky: dark and blue and gray but shot through with copper like sunlight. Tinged with green in the lost corners.

"Well, I guess as long as you don't permanently possess me or anything, I don't really mind. I'll manage. I think."

Ezekiel nodded. "I am grateful for your understanding." He returned his gaze to the trees, and stepped into the empty space. There were gentle red poppies, and long-grown grass the color of cracked gemstones. He stooped, and sank to his knees among the flowers, and sat on his heels with his palms set against his thighs. He tilted his face into a beam of light, and let his eyes drift half shut.

A rustle sounded close to him, and beside him Sam sat. Ezekiel focused his eyes on him. His posture echoed that of a weighted down tree—all loose, long boughs and bent trunk. Cracked up and down and shot through with imperfections similar to those of a fractured shard of rutilated quartz.

In a word...

Beautiful.

He wondered how his brothers and sisters could ever have called this man an abomination. He was anything but. More like a prettily damaged flower that need nothing more than tenderness and hope rather than sunlight and water.

"Um... Dude, could you not... stare?"

"Apologies."

Ezekiel inclined his head, and looked away. He clasped his hands together—not in prayer, but in thoughtfulness. Let his eyelids drift shut, and felt the wind upon his throat and the rain on the back of his neck. Strange, how in a place that technically exists nowhere, he felt sensations so acutely. Perhaps the influence of Sam's mind gave him that. In any case, he appreciated it.

They sat side by side in the flowers and the grass and the mist until the sun dragged bronze and scarlet across her vestments of cloud. At that point, Sam stood, and stretched. His joints cracked and he let out a huff of breath. Looked down, curiously, at Ezekiel.

"This is a dream, I guess." He almost smiled. "And I think I'm waking up, but... Who knows. Maybe I'll see you soon."

Ezekiel nodded with a slight turn of his lips, and kept his eyes on Sam's.

"I am present through all of your waking thoughts and privy to your life."

"Well when you say it like that, it sounds creepy." Sam laughed. His cheeks dimpled, and his eyes squeezed.

Ezekiel smiled up at him.

"I suppose it is, somewhat. I will see you when you sleep again."

Sam chewed on his lip, and shot Ezekiel a fast grin.

"Seeya."

He dissipated, then, like smoke on a strong wind. But Ezekiel could hear his thoughts as he woke—quiet echoes through the tree branches, whispered poems and reprimands. "You're not good enough"s and "why even bother"s. Ezekiel heard those. A background soundtrack to more persistent feelings and thoughts like "hungry" and "my back is sore." He heard them and he tried to project a peace from himself and a love and calmness.

He wanted to change "I am worthless," to "I am worth it," though he barely knew Sam Winchester. But he wanted to help him nonetheless because he was a kind soul, a beautiful soul, a soul who had sacrificed so much and received so little and didn't think it strange. Thought it normal.

He wanted to be the person to give to Sam, rather than take like so many others before him.

So he sat in the breeze and he watched the sky and he healed Sam, and sent him waves of angelic love.


End file.
